


Vicky has a bad idea

by Roadsterguy



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Business, Caucacity, Demons, Endless Meetings, Gen, Hell, Homophobia, Privilege, Racism, Sexism, Slideshow, The Bad Place, Transphobia, overhead projector
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadsterguy/pseuds/Roadsterguy
Summary: A business meeting in hell.  Or, as it's also known, a business meeting.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 54
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [implicated2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/gifts).



"All right!" Shawn stood, glaring at the table of demons, most of which looked away uncomfortably. Pathetic little maggots. Particularly Steve, who was literally a pile of maggots in a human suit. "Time to call this meeting to order."

"Not so fast." Vicky waved a finger at him. He wasted a perfectly good glare on her, which she ignored, standing and placing both hands flat on the table. "We agreed to have an icebreaker."

Trevor waved his hand. "I can create out a knife of pure plasma." He did so, extending it from his palm, a miniature sun in their little room. "That'll break any ice you've got, sugar tits."

"Not _that_ kind of icebreaker, shitwit," she replied, with enviable demonic calm. "I mean a proper _bureaucratic_ icebreaker. Let me tell you, ladies and germs," she went on, looking over the table, nodding acknowledgement at Steve's happy smile at being included. "This is truly the most demonic, evil ceremony you could envision. Yes, the pagans of old would rip a man's flesh apart. But this will rip apart your _soul_."

Shuffling and murmuring around the table seemed to be pointing towards incredulity. "Trevor!" She turned to him. "Imagine if you could make your sexist taunts _completely deniable_. Say they're just part of the culture and anyone who objects is being so _sensitive_ and has no sense of humor."

Trevor spread his arms. "That's what I do anyway!" He grinned his favorite lecherous variant on a grin.

"Yeah - but now we're all locked in a room with you. For _hours_. We have to interact with you. You can even," she grinned right back at him, "force someone to be your trust fall partner."

Trevor leaned forward. "I'm listening."

"And Adelaide. You can talk about your girl's night out to a _captive audience_. You can go on and on about your wine tour and your visit to the 'arts and crafts place,' and take your _time_ making it clear that it was a dildo shop. And they can't pretend they have a call to be on."

"Oh really!" Adelaide took off her underpants, sniffed them, mumbled that they had too much mucus, and threw them at Trevor's face.

"All of the _worst_ of humanity." Vicky spoke slowly and calmly, with perfect confidence, looking over the table again. "Your racist jokes - you don't even have to _pick_ a race, you have time to go through the lot. Your sexist stories about stupid women with big tits. Your transphobic rants - I mean, you just care about the integrity of sports, right? And you still have time for some veiled homophobia! Every hurtful, mean thing you want to get out - team-building is the _perfect_ opportunity."

"This is terrible," Shawn stated, loudly and firmly. Vicky frowned. "Awful. Disgusting. Four hours in a tiny room with only enough oxygen for one? Forced to spend time sucking up the unadulterated privilege of your thoughtless co-workers? Only saved from boredom by horror and disgust? I _hate_ it." He sat at the table. "Right. Let's do it."

* * *

Shawn stumbled out of the meeting room, coughing. "I'm just barely swallowing my puke," he growled. He watched as the rest poured out of the doors, accompanied by the stench of underarm odor, toe cheese, fast-food breath, and cigars that was so strong it practically made visible wafts. "That was the most horrific experience I've had since the Inquisition."

"It was terrible!" Vicky agreed, rubbing her arms as if she could scrape off the horror just by trying hard enough. "I couldn't decide if I was more bored or disgusted. I was a _lot_ of both!"

"That rape joke you told was beyond the pale even for me!" Trevor told Chris, aghast. "I didn't think that was _possible_!"

"It was your fault, bro!" Chris tugged up his shirt to rub his six-pack. "You just kept one-upping me!"

"What else could I do!" Trevor cried out, spreading his arms. "We were stuck in there, and I just had to keep going and going or Adelaide would have talked about her yeast infection again!"

"People! Demons! Hell-beasts from the pits of Hades!" Shawn raised his arms commandingly, and their protests turned to a mutter as they faced him. "I think we can all agree. This was the most vile, unconscionable, unnecessary four-hour experience it's possible to have - and could only be made worse by the inane ramblings of someone given far too much time for a presentation that wouldn't even be interesting if it were five minutes long." The demons all nodded their agreement. "So next time, I'm inviting Michael."


	2. Chapter 2

Michael took a deep breath outside of the door. A summons from Shawn to attend one of the upper-echelon demonic events! What an honor, to be asked by so horrible a hell-beast to one of their gatherings. What would it be? An orgy? A virginal beheading? A ritual blood rite with ancient glyphs carved into unwilling flesh? Well, with Shawn it was always a surprise. Whatever it was, Michael was determined to pitch his new concept, and had quickly swept up the transparencies he had created, along with two blanks to fill out on the fly. He flipped through them again. Not perfect, but they would do.

"I told you Shawn wanted to see you, fuckface. Are you as stupid as you are ugly?" Janet asked, popping into existence and leaning against the wall next to him, snapping her gum.

"Yes!" Michael adjusted his tie with his free hand. "Shawn mentioned that they were having some... team-building? So I thought it might be a good time to pitch my..."

"Ha!" she brayed, so loudly that he dropped the presentation. He dropped to his knees to gather them again. "Like we want to hear your bullshit. Cept... wait." She held out her hand, and the main transparency appeared in it. "Boring pointless plans?"

"They are not!" Michael reached for the transparency in her hand, and a piranha appeared, chomping on his hand, disappearing when he pulled it back with a squeak. "It's an idea for a _new_ approach to hell. One that takes a different tactic, a more subtle approach..."

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard today. And I spent the morning with the Trumps." She flung open the door with a flourish, throwing the slide on top of his stack. "Go on in and lay it on 'em, that shit sounds _perfect_."

Michael walked in, looking around. A distinct smell of microwaved fish permeated the room, accentuating how depleted the air was. A long table stood in the center, demons seated around it, Shawn standing at the front, looking as disapproving as he always looked. "Michael! You have a presentation of your newest inanity to torture our patience with, I hear."

"Yes, yes. I have just a few transparencies..." Michael walked to the front of the table, dropping them on the cheap plastic surface. "If I can just get the overhead projector..."

"Oh, Michael. You're so out of date," Vicky sniffed. "We don't use the overhead projector anymore!"

"You don't?" Michael looked at her, surprised. "But it was so frustrating and inefficient! It always had to be focused, and I could spend hours fiddling to get the transparency straight, and then the bulb would blow out - and that was if someone hadn't scribbled on the tray with a Sharpie..."

"Get with the times, bro." Trevor put a foot on the table and started to clip his toenails. "We've got something _way_ more frustrating and tortuous."

"You do?" Worse than overhead projectors? It must be Vicky's doing. Far too smart, far too diabolical. She was angling for Shawn's job, anyone could see that.

"Yes!" And indeed, it was Vicky. She opened a slim laptop, pressing a key and waiting for its pornography-burdened hard drive to boot up. "The ultimate in form over content," she said, dramatically. "Take minutes of actual substance and transform it into hours of headache-inducing animations, insipid fonts, and inane transitions. Michael, I'm going to ask you to, while we all wait impatiently and stare at you, convert your presentation into," she grinned nastily, " _Powerpoint_."


End file.
